Sometimes I look at the dust on uncleaned shelves, at the tiny dimples in the wall paint, at the barely visible fibres forming the threads of a bedsheet, and think of how there could be whole microscopic civilizations living in there. And of what it could be like to go and visit them at their size.

Any suggestions for alternatives to #Soccerway? Looks like they got bought out by Flashscore, losing their database in the process (or, at least, I can't access it any more). They had some of the best - IIRC sometimes maybe *only* - online coverage of many obscure leagues.

Outrageous linguistic #TIL of the night: in British English, a container for storing rainwater runoff is known as a "water butt". (In this context, a "butt" is a kind of barrel; no relation to body parts. I knew it was theoretically a thing but I thought it only came up in lists of obsolete units.)

With Liverpool losing on penalties, I believe the next game would be a (possible) reunification match between the World and English unofficial football club championships! (AFAIK this is only the second time this ever happened in UFCC history, the first being Liverpool vs. Chelsea on 19 March 1994)

Hot take: a peppercorn payment is proof that you're still not poor. The actual payment is symbolic, of course, but even back then probably no one sold pepper in individual-corn amounts, so to make a peppercorn payment you had to buy a nontrivial amount of pepper first, and that cost money.

Had some recent troubles with Twitter (they claimed my login attempt was suspicious, and didn't even send me a confirmation email). Temporarily recovered, for now, but for those of you who also try to follow me on Twitter - if I end up disappearing, it was probably that. (I hope I don't disappear.)

Any suggestions for projects I can do? And/or, maybe any good Soccerway alternatives? The original Echte Meister is now on summer pause, and despite it having been three weeks since Soccerway broke, they have yet to fix it to anywhere near the level required for any of my projects that involved it.

In the meantime (while Bluesky wasn't working for me) I have started yet another ridiculous project: I'm trying to follow the line starting with West Auckland, who have won the (second) Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy on 17 April 1911. This was quite a mess, since they were playing in the Northern League.

All my unofficial championship (especially Echte-Meister-like) projects that didn't depend on specific local databases are now on indefinite hold due to Soccerway no longer being usable. (They made a new design and links to old games are erroring out.) ...Oh, BTW, Bluesky still doesn't work for me.

seriously. how do I make my Bluesky work it just. stays like that. until I get bored and close it (am I banned? it doesn't look like I'm banned but I can't quite tell)

TFW Bluesky actually worked for me for a moment... then I decided to log in and it immediately stopped working. I wonder if it's, like, a malformed cookie somewhere - not that I know how to check if it is. I have a notification and I can't even see it right now. Hopefully it's nothing very serious.

Is Bluesky *supposed* to not work on Firefox private mode? It hadn't worked for me for about a week now and I don't know what might be happening. I've encountered similar problems before but they always went away after at most a few hours. (sent at close to midnight between May 22nd and 23rd, 2025)

I really need to figure out why Bluesky keeps not working for me; I logged out and logged back in, and now I can't even see my own messages. When I send this I probably wouldn't see it for a long time. In case this takes a while to get through: I'm sending this on May 19th, 2025, at 10:10 PM UTC+3.

TIL that Grêmio Novorizontino (from Novo Horizonte, São Paulo, Brazil) had to play two games simultaneously on 28 November 2020 - a Serie D home game against Joinville, and a Copa Paulista away game at Água Santa (in São Paulo city). (They drew both, then lost the second leg of the Água Santa tie.)

TIL that Clube Náutico Almirante Barroso, who were relegated from the Campeonato Catarinense (the top level state championship of Santa Catarina, in Brazil) in April 2017, apparently did not play in any official competition until June 2018, when Campeonato Catarinense Série B started for that year.

Somewhat unexpected realization: if we didn't end up counting the CHAN qualifiers as 'A' matches, the UFWC title would now have just been gained by Russia. An unexpected (theoretical) achievement for a team that technically isn't even currently supposed to be part of FIFA... #UFWC #CHAN #RUSZAM

#TIL about Jedinstvo Ub, newly promoted into Serbia's first tier, who are, as far as I could tell, the only top-tier team in Europe playing in a place with a two-letter name. (I'm not sure if they're the only such team in the world. [I'd guess not.] Osh is two letters in Kyrgyz but not in English.)

Crossposting from Twitter for hopefully better audience... A few years ago, I tried to do an UFCC-like line starting with the first Intercontinental Cup (in 1960). My research had sent it to Brazil in 1962, and then to Venezuela in 1971, where it stalled for a while due to inconsistency in sources.

Correction to the previous post: 15:08 UTC (and now 15:14). TFW I messed up the conversion *again* (...though in a different way).

Cannot open my profile again. Wondering if it's a browser problem, a connection problem, or what. Worked just fine for a while but stopped working yesterday and still doesn't work today. For future timing reference: I'm sending this on January 15th, 2025, at 14:08 UTC.

Either my account, or my access to Bluesky, is all screwed up - can't open notifications, can't open my own profile. Doesn't say what's happening either. Posts opened just fine until I stupidly decided to log in and check notifications. For timing reference: it should be 2024-10-12, 00:29 UTC+3.

TFW I encounter an author who does great content about *almost* exactly the things I like... but also seems fascinated by the very directions of plot development from those things that I tend to disprefer. Like, yeah, I know that irony is great, can we have some happy endings please?

After lengthy persuasion, I'm now also on BlueSky! Wasn't sure when to join - kept failing to think of good dates! Eventually decided to tie it to the finalization of a long project I was working on (which I should hopefully soon write here about). Fortunately, October 17th is a very pretty date 🙂